Copiers have become a standard piece of equipment in today's modern offices. As a result there is a substantial market in the moving or rigging of copiers from, for example, a copier storage warehouse to a customer's office site and ultimately back again.
Many of today's copiers are heavy, with most of them weighing up to about seven hundred (700#) pounds and some approaching two thousand (2,000#) pounds, and are bulky and difficult to move without damage to the machines and/or the surrounding structures. The present invention is especially but not exclusively directed to machines of at least a couple hundred pounds, particular copiers, as well as other wheeled loads.
For further general background information on this art area, reference is had to the inventor's own pioneering patent, U.S. Pat. No. 3,633,774 entitled "Moving System" issued Jan. 11, 1972, as well as the inventor's application Ser. No. 08/213,162 of Mar. 15, 1994.
A great need has arisen in this part of the moving industry to have reliable equipment to safely and quickly transport delicate but heavy goods such as copier machines and the like. Heretofore, many riggers used generally unassisted manual labor for the moves, putting at significant physical risk the workers themselves, with great risk of damage to the copiers as well.
The present invention is designed to fulfill this need by providing a reliable, quick, flexible and practical moving system for moving copiers and the like, particularly those which have "convenience casters," from one location to another in a way which protects both the worker(s) as well as the load and whose mechanisms for locking and unlocking caster wheels and for latching and unlatching longitudinally, relatively moveable members are foot actuated.